Patent application (US 2004/0070340, U.S. application Ser. No. 10/44,638) discusses the background and foundation for the use of an ambient environment as the propulsive medium, where ambient environment refers to the medium in an ionization region, which may or may not surround a vehicle.
Conventional motorized atmospheric vehicles utilize engines that have moving parts to compress, combust and expel ambient atmosphere to provide propulsive thrust to the attached vehicle. The moving parts have lifetimes associated with the imposed stress, both pressure and thermal, and are limited in the energies imparted to the combusted air.
FIG. 1A illustrates the placement of a conventional atmospheric propulsion system 100 on an airfoil 110 of a vehicle 120, and FIG. 1B illustrates the internal components of the conventional propulsion system 100, the compressor 130, fuel injectors 140, the combustion chamber 150, the expander section 160 and the exhaust nozzle 170.
Strong thin films of micron and submicron size, able to withstand pressure differences between a vacuum on one side of the film and atmospheric pressure on the opposite side, while still allowing an energetic electrons to pass through has been discussed in Neukermans (U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,282), incorporated by reference herein it entirety, for use in cathode ray tubes. The thin films can be made of SiC, BN, B4C, Si3N4, Al4C3, and other similar strength materials as known by one of ordinary skill in the relevant arts that have similar electron penetration characteristics, low stress, and pinhole free.
In addition to electron ionization of neutrals into plasma. photoionization can be used to generate plasmas at relatively high pressures. Lasers have been used to preionize organic gas Tetrakis (dimethylamine) ethylene to initiate a plasma at 80 Torr, then use roughly 2.8 kW of RF power to form a stable plasma density (“Radiofrequency Initiation and Radiofrequency Sustainment of Laser Intiate Seeded High Pressure Plasma”, Eric S. Paller, et Al., Radio Power in Plasma: 14th Topical Conf., Edited by T. K. Mau and J. deGrassie, 2001 American Institute of Physics 0-7354-0038-5, herein referred to as the Paller reference).
Another method of photo ionization is to tailor the laser to the ionization energy of the medium in the plasma generation chamber. One method of generating a powerful yet low power consumption laser is to utilize pumped cavity photonic crystals (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,711,200, filed 23 Mar. 2004). A background in photonic crystals is discussed in “Photonic Crystals: The Road from Theory to Practice”, Steven G. Johnson et al., ISBN 0-7923-7609-9, 2002, and “Photonic Crystals: Molding the Flow of Light”, John D. Joannopoulos et al., ISBN 0-691-03744-2, 1995, both of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety. Several methods of photonic crystal fabrication are known for example U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/265,041 discusses the formation of three dimensional photonic crystals using aphrons.